Social Class and Attitudes about InequalityGeneral Social Surveys, 1972-2006 [Cumulative File]04697SociologySocial ClassInequalityCompetitive IndividualismCrosstabulationDescriptiveInter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Social Class and Attitudes about Inequality: A Data-Driven Learning Guide. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-04-16. Doi:10.3886/classineqattitudesGoal & Concept

Goal

The goal of this module is to explore the ways in which attitudes about inequality and its causes and solutions differ between social classes. Crosstabulation will be used.

Concept

Social class is a measure of relative power, privilege, and opportunity in a society. Individuals in higher social classes generally have greater power and access to resources than individuals in lower social classes. Researchers may assign individuals to social classes on the basis of criteria such as occupation, education, income, wealth, and place of residence.

Americans' attitudes about social class and inequality are often characterized by competitive individualism-the belief that economic success is the result of hard work and ability. Competitive individualism stresses individual responsibility over structural factors as causes of social inequality.

Examples of possible research questions about social class and attitudes toward inequality:

What do Americans believe about the causes and consequences of inequality in America?

Do people from different social classes hold different attitudes about the level of inequality in the U.S.?

Do people from different social classes hold different attitudes about the causes of inequality in the U.S.?

Do people from different social classes hold different attitudes about solutions for inequality in the U.S.?

Dataset

Data for this exercise come from the General Social Surveys (GSS), which have been conducted by the National Opinion Research Center annually since 1972, except for the years 1979, 1981, and 1992, and biennially beginning in 1994. Main areas covered in the GSS include socioeconomic status, social mobility, social control, the family, race relations, sex relations, civil liberties, and morality, along with additional topical modules in each year of data collection.

The GSS sample is designed to represent all non-institutionalized English-speaking persons 18 years of age or older, living in the United States. The 1972-2006 cumulative fileis used in this exercise.

This exercise will use the following variables:

Total Family Income (INCOME98)

Highest Degree Earned (DEGREE)

Income differentials in the U.S. are too big (INCGAP)

Effort is Rewarded in America (REWRDEFF)

Those in need have to take care of themselves (CARESELF)

Application

For this exercise, you will be exploring the relationship between social class (as measured by income and education), and three measures of attitudes about inequality, using crosstabulation.

In this dataset, total combined family income is divided into 23 categories--too many for a useful crosstabulation. So, we recoded it into four categories and called the new variable "NEWINC".

Attitudes toward Income Inequality in the U.S.

Take a look at the variable INCGAP, which contains answers to the question, "Differences in income in America are too large. Do you agree or disagree?" Answers to this question are coded Strongly Agree (1), Agree (2), Neither Agree nor Disagree (3), Disagree (4), and Strongly Disagree (5). We recoded INCGAP into three categories: Agree or Strongly Agree (1), Neither Agree nor Disagree (2), and Disagree or Strongly Disagree (3). We also excluded "can't choose," "not applicable" and "not ascertained" (responses 8, 0, and 9) and called the new variable "LARGEGAP."

Now look at the crosstab of LARGEGAP with NEWINC. Do people in the different income brackets hold the same views about the level of inequality in the US?

Attitudes toward Rewards for Efforts

Next take a look at the variable REWRDEFF, which contains answers to the question, "In America people get rewarded for their effort. Do you agree or disagree?" Answers to this question are coded Strongly Agree (1), Agree (2), Neither Agree nor Disagree (3), Disagree (4), and Strongly Disagree (5). We recoded REWRDEFF into three categories: Agree or Strongly Agree (1), Neither Agree nor Disagree (2), and Disagree or Strongly Disagree (3). As with the previous exercise, we excluded responses outside this range and called the new variable "EFFORTPAYS."

Look at the crosstab of EFFORTPAYS with NEWINC. How strong is the level of support for the idea that effort pays? Do all income groups support the idea to the same extent?

Attitudes toward Self-Reliance

Now consider the variable CARESELF, which contains answers to the question, "Those in need have to learn to take care of themselves and not depend on others. Do you agree or disagree?" Answers to this question are coded Strongly Agree (1), through Strongly Disagree (5). We recoded CARESELF into three categories (as described above) and called the new variable "SELFRELIANT."

Run a crosstab ofSELFRELIANT with NEWINC. How would you interpret the results?

So far in this exercise, income has been used to measure of social class. Now repeat the analyses using education instead of income. Education will be measured by the variable DEGREE, which measures the highest degree earned, ranging from less than high school, through graduate degree. We recoded DEGREE into three categories: High school or less (1), Junior college through bachelors degree (2), and graduate degree (3), and called the new variable "DEGREECAT."

Now re-run your analyses of LARGEGAP, EFFORTPAYS, and SELFRELIANT, using DEGREECAT in the column field. What do you find? How do your results differ from the previous models? How are they similar?

Interpretation & Summary

Think about your answers to the application questions before you click through to the interpretation guide for help in answering them.

Social Class and Attitudes about Inequality

How do attitudes toward inequality in the U.S. differ depending on the respondents' social class? Do different measures of social class (here: income and education) yield different results in attitudes toward inequality?

Attitudes toward Rewards for Efforts

Are respondents from lower social classes as likely as those from upper classes to hold the belief that effort pays? Are the findings similar whether income or education is used to measure social class?

Attitudes toward Self-Reliance

Are respondents from lower social classes as likely as those from upper classes to hold the attitude that people in need should take care of themselves? Are the findings similar whether income or education is used to measure social class?

Competitive individualism

Looking at the analyses of social class and rewards for efforts, and social class and self-reliance, what support (if any) do you find for the notion of competitive individualism?

Interpretation

Things to think about in interpreting the results:

It is important to look at the amount of missing data in each relationship and think about the ways in which that might affect the generalizability of the results - some crosstabulation tables have relatively little missing data, others have a great deal. In general, results from this dataset should be fairly representative of the general population because it is a national probability sample.

Reading the results: the numbers in each cell of the crosstabulation tables show the percent of the people who fall into the overlapping categories, followed by the actual number of people that represents this sample. The coloring in the tables demonstrates how the observed numbers in each cell compares to the expected number if there were no association between the two variables. The accompanying bar charts display the patterns visually as well.

The use of column percentages, as shown in these tables, allows for the comparison of answers to the "outcome" of interest across values of the grouping variable. For example, 68.4% of those earning under $20,000/year hold the belief that the income gap is too large in the US, compared to 48.1% of those who earn more than $90,000/year.

Weights (mathematical formulas) are often used to adjust the sample proportions, usually by race, sex, or age, to more closely match those of the general population. The analyses used in this guide did not use any weights, which may reduce the generalizability of the findings, but the resulting tables are accurate descriptions of the relationships found between these variables among these respondents.

The analyses show the following:

Attitudes toward inequality differ by social class when income is used to measure social class. Just less than half of the respondents with the highest income (48.1%) think that there is too much inequality in the US, while more than 2/3 of respondents in each of the other three income groups held this feeling. When education is used to measure social class, over 60% of respondents from each education level believes that there is too much inequality, but respondents with a bachelor's degree or higher are the least likely (60%) to share this feeling.

The tables examining the relationship between social class and the attitude that effort pays show similar trends whether class is measured by income or education. Again, those in the highest social class (by income or education) are the most likely to agree that effort pays (78.3% and 77.4%, respectively). Although the majority of respondents from all class groups do feel that effort pays, no other class group exceeds 68.1% agreement with the sentiment.

The tables examining the relationship between social class and the attitude that people in need should take care of themselves show that about half of all respondents across social classes think that people in need should be more self-reliant. However the findings differ slightly depending on whether income or education is used as a measure of social class. When income is used, the higher the social class, the more likely people are to hold the attitude that people in need should be self-reliant (55.9% of those in the highest income bracket, compared to 48.3% of those in the lowest). If we look at education, the differences between classes are very slight and there is no definite pattern.

While there are significant differences among different social classes in their level of support for attitudes about self-reliance or the notion that effort pays, the findings demonstrate the influence of competitive individualism - the belief in individual responsibility and the idea that success is the result of hard work.